| Vector On Course To Buy Malmaison And Hotel du Vin |
| Marylebone Warwick Balfour (MWB) has made a proposal to sell for £495.1 million the nine Malmaison and eight Hotel du Vin properties in the UK (a combined total of 1,363 rooms). The proposed deal includes the total of seven properties under development. MWB will continue to manage all of the hotels. The betrothed is Vector Hospitality, which is the UK’s first specialist hospitality REIT (real estate investment trust). Overseeing the nuptials is Richard Balfour-Lynn, the chief executive of MWB and leader of the Alternative Hotel Group, which has founded Vector in partnership with Bank of Scotland Corporate and Royal Bank of Scotland. The REIT, which intends to float on the London market next month, has on its board Sir David Michels, the former chief executive of Hilton Group. |
| Hilton To Sell Ten European Hotels; Completes Scandic Sale | Return to Headlines |
| Hilton Hotels Corporation (HHC) has agreed to sell ten Hilton hotels (three in Germany, two in France, two in Spain and one in each of Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg – a total of some 3,300 rooms) to Morgan Stanley Real Estate (MSRE) for around €566 million. HHC will manage five of the properties (those in Düsseldorf, Dresden, Strasbourg, Paris (at Charles de Gaulle airport) and Zürich) under long-term contracts and MSRE will invest a total of €18 million in them. HHC expects to manage all of the other hotels, with the exception of the Los Zocos Club Resort in the Canary Islands. The sale of all ten properties should be complete by the end of the third quarter. One sale that is now complete is that of the Scandic chain. HHC announced last month that private equity firm EQT had agreed to buy the 132 hotels for €833 million. | |
| Many A Greenback Buys A Red Roof | Return to Headlines |
| Accor announced last year that it was undertaking a review of its budget hotel chain Red Roof Inn. The outcome of that review is the sale of 326 hotels (35,238 rooms) from a portfolio of properties that is exclusive to North America. A consortium composed of Westbridge Hospitality Fund and Global Special Situations Group, part of Citigroup Global Markets Holdings, has paid US$1.32 billion for the assets. Westbridge Hospitality Fund is a partnership between Westmont Hospitality Group and a number of Canadian pension fund managers. Before the sale, the Red Roof Inn portfolio had 335 hotels; Accor has taken the other nine hotels and rebranded them as Motel 6, Accor’s other budget chain in North America. | |
| Welsh Jurys' Votes For Mountain Capital | Return to Headlines |
| Mountain Capital, a property investment firm, has paid close to a reported £16 million for the four-star Jurys Cardiff Hotel, Jurys Doyle’s solitary property in Wales. The 146-room hotel is to be rebranded as a Park Inn. Mountain Capital is owned by the backers of Admiral Taverns; those same backers were behind the purchase in 2005 of nine hotels from Queens Moat Houses. Those nine properties too subsequently took the Park Inn brand. | |
| Koor Industries Completes Sale Of Stake In Sheraton Moriah Israel | Return to Headlines |
| Koor Industries, the Israeli holding company, should this week complete the sale of its 56.5% holding in Sheraton Moriah Israel, which with nine properties, eight of them under the Sheraton brand, is the largest international hotel chain in Israel. Koor revealed in December that it had agreed to sell its stake to Azorim Development and Construction for US$23.8 million. | |
| Rotana Hotels Signs 11 Management Contracts | Return to Headlines |
| Rotana Hotels is on course to double the size of its portfolio to 53 hotels by 2010. The company gave itself a boost by recently signing 11 management agreements at one stroke. These agreements include one that will introduce a Suites property to the United Arab Emirates when the 200-room Hili Rotana Suites opens in Al 'Ayn in 2009. That same year Rotana will enter Oman for the first time in the company of the 300-room Centro by Rotana – Sohar. Another of the 11 contracts means Jordan can offer twin attractions, with the 400-room Boulevard Rotana Suites, opening in 2009, joining the previously announced 450-room Amman Rotana Hotel, opening in 2008, in the capital Amman. | |
| KM Properties To Launch Tamani Hotels & Resorts | Return to Headlines |
| KM Properties, the real estate development division of KM Holding, is to launch a management division called Tamani Hotels & Resorts. The new company will build a portfolio of eight to 12 hotels over the next three years in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia; six of the properties are destined to be those that KM Properties is currently developing in the emirate of Dubai. All of the hotels in the portfolio, which will range in rating from three-star to five-star, will adhere to Islamic principles. | |
| Liverpool Leads Staybridge Suites Parade In The UK | Return to Headlines |
| The most recent addition to the stable it might be, but a Staybridge Suites hotel at the Kings Waterfront development in Liverpool seems likely to be the first property with the brand to gallop out into the UK market. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) announced the arrival of the brand in the UK in 2005 with a brace of hotels in London. However, since both properties are still at the planning stage, the 132-room hotel in Liverpool can take the laurels in early 2008. BDL Hotels will develop the hotel and IHG will manage it under a 20-year contract. IHG, which wants to open 22 of the extended stay properties in the UK over the next four years, announced last month that it had struck deals with Trinity Hotels to develop the 120-room Staybridge Suites Aston, in Birmingham, and a 120-room property in Newcastle upon Tyne. Work on these two properties is scheduled to start later this year. | |
| Radisson In South Africa: Port Elizabeth's The Second | Return to Headlines |
| Rezidor Hotel Group is to manage a Radisson hotel in the resort of Port Elizabeth, on the southern coast of South Africa. The beachfront hotel, which is owned by Auspex Property, will have 173 rooms and is scheduled to open in late 2008. | |
| Sunborn Hooked On Denmark | Return to Headlines |
| ‘Gone Fishing’ reads the sign hanging from the knob of Sunborn Corporation’s front door. The Finnish hotel and leisure company has not though ventured to the fishing town of Gilleleje in Denmark to tickle trout or outwit the crafty pike but rather to land a luxury 200-room spa and wellness resort. Work on the project is expected to start next year and to be finished in 2009. Meanwhile, Home Properties, the Swedish hotel property company, cast its net near Lake Vättern and caught the Hotel Klosterkungen. Home Properties paid Intressentor around Skr55 million (roughly €6 million) for the 96-room hotel, which stands in the Swedish city of Jönköping. | |
| Whitbread Reports Its Full-Year Results | Return to Headlines |
| The Premier Travel Inn portfolio can sit back with a skinny latte (purchased from a branch of Costa, naturally) and drink to its performance over the course of Whitbread’s financial year ending 1 March 2007. The budget hotels saw their revenue rise by 16.7%, contributing £458.5 million to Whitbread’s total full-year revenue of £1.3 billion, which was itself 10.3% ahead of the previous year’s comparable. RevPAR across the Premier Travel Inn hotels of £37.68 was an increase of 4.8%. David Lloyd Leisure, the chain of fitness clubs for which Whitbread is considering offers, pumped up its revenue by 5.7%, to £237.3 million. Whitbread made a full-year pre-tax profit before exceptionals of £213.0 million, an increase on the previous year of 24.5%. | |
| CHE Hotel Group Reflects On A 'Disappointing' Year | Return to Headlines |
| A comparatively good 2005 (a profit of £0.6 million) and a positive start to 2007: a shame then for CHE Hotel Group that 2006 was the year the company made a loss after tax of £7.9 million. RevPAR across the company’s UK hotels was down 1.2% (like for like) at £24.73. However, the company’s shareholders had been forewarned that 2006 would in the words of its chairman be “a year of transition”, not the least because of a programme of intensive renovation work. Shareholders could though draw some consolation from seeing revenue for the year ending 31 December 2006 rise by 0.75%, to £79.8 million, and from receiving news that their company had signed contracts for Sleep Inn hotels at seven locations across the UK. | |
Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 19/04/07-26/04/07
Millennium & Copthorne - Analysts hoped the company might put more hotels into its Singaporean REIT.
Whitbread - Panmure raised its target price from 2,250p to 2,300p.
Accor - Certain analysts were reportedly disappointed by the sale price of the Red Roof Inn chain.
